A lucrative sinecure in the Excise was bestowed on Ferguson.

The duties of the Solicitor of the Treasury were both very important and very invidious.

It was the business of that officer to conduct political prosecutions, to collect the evidence, to instruct the counsel for the Crown, to see that the prisoners were not liberated on insufficient bail, to see that the juries were not composed of persons hostile to the government.

In the days of Charles and James, the Solicitors of the Treasury had been with too much reason accused of employing all the vilest artifices of chicanery against men obnoxious to the Court.

The new government ought to have made a choice which was above all suspicion.